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Dessert

Rice Pudding

A sweet pudding made by boiling rice in milk, then adding butter, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. Boil the rice in the milk, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool.

  3. Mix in the butter, grated nutmeg, and sugar to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake.

  2. For better flavor, bake it again the next day after removing the brown skin and adding more milk.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch swells and thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Cooks the rice slowly and forms the creamy, liquid base of the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more velvety mouthfeel.
Nutmeg
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavor that complements the milk and sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the dairy and the warm spice.

The step that matters

Boil the rice in the milk, stirring constantly until it thickens.. Milk scorches easily on the bottom of the pan, and rice starch can stick and burn. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the starch dispersed, so the pudding thickens smoothly instead of turning lumpy or burnt.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More rice pudding recipes

Baked 88Apple 84with Meringue 40Boiled 38French 30Lemon 29 See all 1,220 →

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